Countries in Africa continue to fight the incredibly deadly crime of counterfeit medications which attacks and kills many within underdeveloped nations.
The following story comes from the August 7th edition of the Sudan Tribune and describes how the Sudanese government wages a war against counterfeiters who blatantly shop their dangerous wares on an unsophisticated population.
In Africa, where counterfeit medications can make up over 50% of a nation’s pharmaceutical supply chain, the issue of bogus drugs is at epidemic proportions and its impact on the health and well being of these populations is increasingly more deadly.
Consumers in developed nations should not feel comfortable that they are immune from the dangers of these criminal acts.
Because of huge profits, the likelihood that they will avoid legal punishment and without consumers or regulatory agencies on guard against it, counterfeiters are even more incentivized to ply their deadly inventories within developed nation’s legitimate supply chains.
The following are the highlights from the Sudan Tribune article:
· A megaphone atop a double cabin land cruiser roamed Luonyaker main market on Friday warning customers that some unscrupulous persons have flooded most of the rural towns with fake medicines purportedly to cure all diseases.
· In Southern Sudan, even those selling fake drugs are vulnerable to counterfeiting. Wol Kon Laau, head of Yiik Adoor Primary Health Care Unit in Gogrial East County, Warrap State, said the common use of counterfeit or sub-standard pharmaceuticals means many patients wait too long to seek proper medical attention.
· "As a practitioner I have had examples to give. I encountered most of them when I was practicing as a medical student that certain drugs were brought in into the system even in the normal delivery system which were of low quality and it even becomes worse with the drug peddlers who are going about villages killing people," he added.
· A salesman without medical background says his Capsule cures high blood pressure, arthritis, kidney disease, premature menopause, cardiovascular disease, and infertility, saying it might be correct but this requires prescription from medical practitioners not by assumption.
· "Fake and counterfeited products usually involve products that are either high volume or high cost. So you look mostly at anti-Malarial currently the Artemisinine combination therapy. In addition to that there are products for erectile dysfunction and because these are often sold at pubs and places where people try to get them without prescription they go for high value, they go for high cost," he explained.
· "With me in the committee we go on the market. We sample products, and we publish the results so that we can name and shame. We hope that within 18 months Southern Sudan in general and Warrap state in particular should be able to have very decent data on the extent of the quality problem in the area," said Laau.
· He says that this will give health officials a better sense of the scale of the problem and allow for the eventual prosecution of those purposely endangering public health.
To learn more about technology and solutions to combat counterfeit medications, visit: http://www.xstreamsystems.net/.
· In Southern Sudan, even those selling fake drugs are vulnerable to counterfeiting. Wol Kon Laau, head of Yiik Adoor Primary Health Care Unit in Gogrial East County, Warrap State, said the common use of counterfeit or sub-standard pharmaceuticals means many patients wait too long to seek proper medical attention.
· "As a practitioner I have had examples to give. I encountered most of them when I was practicing as a medical student that certain drugs were brought in into the system even in the normal delivery system which were of low quality and it even becomes worse with the drug peddlers who are going about villages killing people," he added.
· A salesman without medical background says his Capsule cures high blood pressure, arthritis, kidney disease, premature menopause, cardiovascular disease, and infertility, saying it might be correct but this requires prescription from medical practitioners not by assumption.
· "Fake and counterfeited products usually involve products that are either high volume or high cost. So you look mostly at anti-Malarial currently the Artemisinine combination therapy. In addition to that there are products for erectile dysfunction and because these are often sold at pubs and places where people try to get them without prescription they go for high value, they go for high cost," he explained.
· "With me in the committee we go on the market. We sample products, and we publish the results so that we can name and shame. We hope that within 18 months Southern Sudan in general and Warrap state in particular should be able to have very decent data on the extent of the quality problem in the area," said Laau.
· He says that this will give health officials a better sense of the scale of the problem and allow for the eventual prosecution of those purposely endangering public health.
To learn more about technology and solutions to combat counterfeit medications, visit: http://www.xstreamsystems.net/.
To read the entire Sudan Tribune article, visit: http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article35875.
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